close up's of new spines

Book covers for print

These are my 5 book covers for print + 1 alternative cover for one flew over the cuckoo's nest. I am still deciding which works best and might print both initially.

Inkling by Wacom experimentation

Today I had a play with the new 'Inkling' by Wacom, which is essentially a device that allows you to draw onto paper with the pen which contains a biro nib. You then plug the clip into your mac and it brings up your sketches. It's amazing how you can create new layers while you are drawing, enabling you more editiing capabilities than when you draw normally onto onesingle sheet of paper and then scan it in. It works really well at creating vector or pixel files of your work. Curved lines work best, while more angular sketchy lines come out a little bit disjointed and don't give the effect that I often try to achieve. I think in many ways this is a tool that could save me time scanning and tree's in terms of paper. However, a lot of my work requires different weights of line used together, as well as different textures. I have set ways of creating artowork where the scan itself and the way that I scan it play a large part in the process and cannot be deducted (e.g. scanning my work at 600dpi to maintain or improve line quality when rescaled up/down.)

Overall I would say that it is fantastic as a tool, and I am keen to try and use it in my working process where possible, and then make an informed decision as to whether it's price (£150!) is worth the time that it could save me!

designs in print....

I printed out my modified covers to check how they come out when printed. The white areas that look great on screen where they are back lit, do look a little lost on paper. I am either going to use a more off-white/taupe kind of colour or print on antique coloured stock when I print on Friday/Monday.

Timetable from now until the end of time

Two covers to decide between....

Re-working the type for 1984 cover

After printing the cover for 1984 I decided that the watercolour texture of the initial type worked better than the flat colour I used for the new type so I decided to merge the two styles :